Why do people say they cannot describe why they like this movie — and for the record, I don’t –? I can describe exactly what it is. Strip away all the garbage and you are left with a picture of space itself. The experience is exactly like what you would get by gazing into the night’s sky and pondering the connection of man and universe. The movie just forces you to do that for nearly three hours. You fill in the void with your own dreams. That’s all. Some people fall asleep instead.

The creepy artistry sticks with you a while, but in terms of methodological novelty — and I use that term lightly — John Cage’s 4’33″ from 1952 predates it by 16 years.
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The universe may or may not end at some point. If it doesn’t end, then what’s the point of life since any lifetime is finite and hence negligible? If it does end, then even more so, what’s the point of progress and advancement? What’s the performance objective of life, if there is implicitly one?

Could it be that the objective is to maximize the perturbation to the universe, through some combination of genetics and memetics, in case it doesn’t end? More offsprings, more perturbation through biology; make more “difference” to the world, more perturbation through culture? That would be one secular response in favor of the here-and-now, compared to the alternative, somewhat ascetic objective of seeking inner satisfaction.

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